Thursday, July 23, 2009

Today was my last day in Calgary!!! I get to go home tomorrow! This is such welcome news! We have been having a heat wave here in Calgary and my team mates and I have nicknamed our dorm room the "sauna"...it keeps heat in! There are only a few small windows and no ventilation to be heard of!

Today ws a big day in the gym as I squatted past my max ever! My previous max was 218 lbs in the summer of 2007 and I was only able to do about 3 repetitions. Today I squatted two plates a side which amounts to 225 lbs!!! And I was able to do 4 sets of 7 repetitions at that weight! This is another huge step on the road to recovery...being stronger than ever! YES!

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Sled pulls summer 2007-first year on the team...now these involve way more weight and we are doing them indoors on a track.

Hello All!

Half way through our second week in Calgary! Only 10 days till we can go home!! YES!

Things are still going really well here in Calgary as far as training goes. We finished off last week with sledpulls (death by sprinting with sleds stacked with weights). Going in Andrew didn't know if I would be able to do sleds as sprinting with weights was not something that i have even got close to yet in my rehab. I decided to give it a try and just stop if it got too painful. I was able to do the entire thing! GREAT!!! Saturday my knee was stiff and where my staple is hurt but other than that is held up! Just one more step in the right direction! Friday night we went and saw a movie and had a campfire in Steph Irwins backyard (s'mores oh yeah!!), saturday we went boating on ghost lake with Cam Brewington who was on the national team last year and his friend Chris Scheele who is ex-Alberta team. We ended up taking refuge for about 45 minutes under a bridge while a thunder storm passed by! The waiting payed off as afterwards the sun broke out and people were able to wake surf! I have decided to take the summer off water sports just as a precaution. I just don't want to take any chances. Being on the water was great...just being outdoors, listening to music and seeing my friends enjoy and challenge themselves made the experience very worth it! Afterwards we had a bbq on the bank of the lake before heading back into Calgary. Sunday we had an incredible beach volleyball game near the university with Cam, Chris, and my teammates Erik Reid, Kelby Halbert, Steph Irwin, Erin Mielzynski, Britt phelan, Eve Routhier, and Toria Whitney. It was incredibly fun to play volleyball again! I played all throughout highschool and would have loved to go further in that sport! it is definately my favourite sport after skiing (well ones that I have played competitively anyway)!

Monday saw us return to the gym and do lactate testing on the bike. Lactate testing has to do with Lactic Acid not lactating for clarification! We ride a bike starting at 80 watts, every two minutes the watts are increased by 25 watts and a sample of your blood is taken to see how much lactic acid you are producing. yes that means every two minutes your finger is getting pricked by a needle- not good for people who have needle phobia's- like me. You continue to go up watts every two minutes until you hit a lactate of 6 (this would be the equivalent of biking up a VERY steep hill ...6 would be when your legs feel like they are going to fall off...they are no longer able to keep rotating your pedals fast enough to keep your bike upright)...AFTER you hit 6 then they increase the wattage every minute until failure..which usually is only a minute or two after you hit 6. This is when they take your max heartrate...yes you read correctly...MAX heartrate....the fastest your heart can go! Mine maxes out at about 205. To compare...the average humans resting heart rate is about 60 and when running gets to about 150. To get back to what we did on Monday (we only had to go to 6 as this was just a clarification of training zones). My testing showed that I had improved! My heart rates went down in comparison to the amount of lactic acid that I was producing! yes! progress!

Tuesday had us doing a strength workout in the morning and 2 times 15 minute bike sprints in the afternoon ( about 200 watts and heartrate about 175-180). It is a really tough thing to try and distract yourself enough to forget how much these sprints hurt..and for how long you have to keep going! 3 minutes into the workout your mind is pleading at you to stop, your legs are screaming as they are being poisoned by lactic acid and it takes all the mental control you have to stop your hand from pressing the button which will turn down the amount of watts that you are doing. It especially is terrible when your ipod runs out of battery...music is the best way to take your mind off of the task at hand!

Today, wednesday, we had to do a 50 km ride. As most of us are pretty tired we decided to try and find a nice flat ride for today. On mapmyride.com we found a great looking 50 km loop out inthe foothills. On the map it looked about the shape of BC. Our plan was to ride the top side of the route (yukon/ northwest territories border heading west) then turn down (making the shape of the BC Coast) then riding straight back up (the alberta border) back to our starting point. It would have been the perfect ride-if we had actually followed the correct route! It all started when as a group we passed a fellow roadbiker on highway 22x. I guess getting passed by 4 young women is not something that the average adult make is used to when roadbiking. This particular roadbiker did not like getting passed! He sped up after we passed him and tried to take off. ony we caught him again. This time as we passed he actually reached out and tapped me on the shoulder. I was a little surprised! It turns out he is a retired roadbiking coach...he used to coach our nutritionalist Kelly-Ann (who is one of the most successful Canadian Road Bikers ever)! For the next 15 minutes he rode beside us giving us helpful tips about riding in a "peloton" and how to properly draft and use hand signals for changing leaders and poining out debree etc. It was actually really cool and funny! He couldn't believe what "big" girls we were. After 15 minutes he road off only leaving his name "papa". It was really cool to ride with him but during our little tete-de-tete we missed the exit which would lead us downwards (BC Coast)! We decided to take a parellel route which would take us to the same place. However, this small mis-step at the beginning of our ride led to problems down the line. As we crossed the bottom of our route we misjudged the distance we had gone and missed our upwards exit (Alberta border). We continued further down the road and ended up on a busy highway way past our starting point. By the time we stopped and tried to figure out where we were we had already gone 56 km and were FAR away from our destination. We ended up riding on a busy highway and crossing traffic on an overpass! VERY scary....to make matters seem worse there were huge signs along the highway reading DANGEROUS GOODS ROUTE...thats a real feel good sign! In the end we rode for 2 hours and 40 minutes and instead of 50 km's we rode 70 km's! 20 extra kms!!!!! Needless to say we were a grumpy, tired, sore, energy low, hungry group of girls by the end! I really crashed after the ride...I slept in the car ride back home!

Tomorrow we are back in the gym and in the afternoon we are scheduled to go play some squash! Exciting! Friday will entail more sled pulls Yuck!

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

I am currently back in Calgary! AGAIN! yay? yup! I am doing a ton of working out! That is all I say! I arrived on Sunday and have since completed 6 workouts (its wednesday). The intensity of the workouts have been upped and the amount of cardio is down slightley. Only a 40 km ride this morning instead of 80. On monday we were in the gym for 3 and a half hours in the morning and completed an hour bike ride in the afternoon. Yesterday we were in the gym for 2 and a half hours then had a nutrition seminar followed by an intervals cardio workout. Welcome back to Calgary! We are in a new dorm ...it is quite "cozy" shall I say. One thing is for sure....the fridge is not big enough to accommidate 4 female athletes food!

A little visitor we had for a few hours while I was home. A one day old Baby Bambi who was safely taken back to the forest after some goats milk and a careful hands off policy! If you see a baby bambi do not remove it! This is something we did not know beforehand! But now we do! No harm done! Enjoy!

Being home after being is Calgary for a month was like discovering paradise all over again! Mountains, lakes, Mountain Biking, Horseback riding, Hiking, Canoeing, Consistantly hot weather, my own bed, a car to drive, a free washing machine, good coffee, someone else making breakfast, sleeping in, and last but not least my family! There is alot going on in Heffley lake that I LOVE!!

It felt incredible to be able to see my friends and enjoy all of summers little pleasures! When I was home my teamate Kelly McBroom came and visited me for 5 days. I could hardly sit still! All I wanted to do was show her EVERYTHING! I have tried to describe to my team mates where I live and what I do but nothing really makes sense until it is seen with your own eyes! So having Kelly was incredible! Finally an opportunity to play show and tell!

On her first day we decided to go for a walk before dinner. We brought my two dogs Benny and Jazzy along. half way through our walk we decided to go for a canoe. It was an easy walk over to where we keep our canoe and everything was going well until we got onto the water. Benny is now 15 and quite docile so we brought her into the canoe with us. jazzy being a hyper 2 year old black lab was left out of the canoe on the shore. It didn't take her more than two seconds to decide that we were not leaving without her. As she swam after us she whined non-stop. To the house on the edge of the lake it must have looked like we were purposefully trying to drown the dog! Needless to say, feeling it necessary to avoid having our neighbours call the SPCA for dog abuse I pulled her into the canoe. For the first few mintues she seemed content to rock to canoe as she pelted from one side to the other whining after ducks and other items on the water. Through all this Kelly was taing beautiful scenic shots of Heffley Lake. As we neared the island at the last leg of our little tour we spotted a huge thing of caterpillars dangling off a branch over the water. Kelly being the photographically capable type of person she is leaned in for a good shot of this phenomenon. At this precise moment as Kelly leaned slightly over the edge of the canoe to capture nature in action jazzy decided to rush to the same side of the boat...FLIPPING the canoe!!! Now it must be understood that this particular day, it was not sunny..in fact it had rained in the early afternoon. Therefore Kelly and I were dressed appropriately in Sweaters, lululemon pants and running shoes. NOT the best swimming attire! It took us a good 15 minutes to find both paddles, empty the boat of water, negotiate the canoe away from the HUGE red and black butted water spiders and recommence our voyage across the lake...SANS Jazzy! She had to swim....

That was only one of the many adventures we had while kelly was at my place! It was incredible to have her over! Thanks Kelly!

About Me

Member of the Canadian National Development Ski since 2007. I have very high goals of where I want to go in my sport. Born in 1989 I grew up skiing/racing at Sun Peaks Resort. My Mom and Dad are both Ski Instructors and avid masters racers. My brother is a Ski Coach for the Sun Peaks Alpine Club and quite possibly the reason I am able to ski fast today! A life time of chasing him and anyone would be prepared for the easy task of going around gates!
A very LARGE thanks to my sponsors. Mom and Dad, Sun Peaks Resort Corporation, Fischer, Leki, Uvex and all the people who have ever bought items from Tree Line Studios and Lone Wolf Gallery!